World of Rayne
This is my most beloved story. World of Rayne began in 2009, a difficult transitional stage in my life. At that time, I struggled to cope with the concept of reality itself, grieving that I would never truly meet my characters or experience the magic I loved so much. I used books, movies, video games, and of course my own stories, as forms of escapism. After one particularly bad breakdown, I decided to brainstorm a completely new story. I came up with several ideas, but the only one that I really liked was one that spoke to me—a story of a lonely girl who loved her characters so much that she wished to escape reality and be with them. Thus Rayne was born. In the first version of the story, Rayne’s writing was simply so beautiful that it literally came to life as she read it. The story began when Rayne accidentally read Akyro into her own reality and had to deal with the consequences. After a time, Akyro begged Rayne to put him back in his own world, but she followed him there and then couldn’t go back home. Very little of the current version existed in this world; Changeling hadn’t even been thought of yet. I think that the biggest villain then was Jakam. The first part of the story went through several drafts, but nothing really seemed to work. These early drafts had a lot of self-insertion, and I think it’s interesting to see my experiences and opinions from the time that I never really wrote down in any other way. Another draft of the first chapter started instead with Akyro’s entrance. In this version, Rayne’s mother died shortly before the beginning of the story, and her father was much crueler than he is now. Some of the characters and places had different names at the time, such as Azinane (now Azene), and Taledio (Talexyo). Obviously, at this time I hadn’t developed Talen as a language, and the story was very different from its current state. However, this story did introduce the current mechanic of Azene’s wishes, and the hatem-kiton. This chapter remained unfinished, but I did write some of the next chapter. In this version of the story, Rayne meets the fortune teller Baku-Sei. Baku-Sei warns Rayne of the evil stirring up in Malenti. At some point, there was also an odd subplot with a pair of necklaces—Baku-Sei gives one to Rayne. I think that I meant for this to be a way for Rayne to get home at the end of the story, but none of it was ever written down, so I don’t remember all of the mechanics of it. The more current version of the story begins chapter one here. I assume that this was written in 2012 because I was applying for college then. Here I was working on Rayne’s relationship with her father. I decided that her mother had died in childbirth, leaving Rayne to be raised by Travis, who wasn’t quite up to the task. I gave Travis a little more of a backstory—he works as an editor. He once aspired to be a novelist, and in fact met Rayne’s mother that way. That is part of the reason that he doesn’t want Rayne to follow in her mother’s footsteps; he has an irrational fear of her coming to the same fate. If it wasn’t already clear before, Jakam illegally hunts hatem-kiton for their soft fur. Hatem-kiton are children of Nif and give life to the Talen forest (where Talexyo is housed). All of the foxes past the border to Malenti have been hunted to extinction, leaving a small part of the forest withered. Jakam’s party now makes their way to Malenti to sell the furs. At this point Rayne and Akyro make their escape from Malenti with the help of Kali, the fire dancer, whom they break from prison after Rayne recognizes him—he says that he is only allowed out for his performances, which pay for his food. Like all of the king’s servants, he is cuffed with a cursed bracelet which prevents him from leaving the city, and so Rayne and Akyro are forced to leave him behind. However, in the forest, they are captured by some highwaymen as they run from goblin guards. The highwaymen are led by a massive man named Sloghent, who possesses a talking staff named Wendenglot and constantly has two gnomes following him around so that he doesn’t fall as he walks. Somehow, the highwaymen got the curse off of Kali’s bracelet and captured him as well. In early versions, Rayne would hold on only with the knowledge that they would be saved eventually—and they were, by the half-dragons from the southern mountains, led by Rondurr. In the current version, it doesn’t make sense for the half-dragons to know where Rayne is, and so Rayne and Akyro have to escape on their own. I’m not sure what happens to Kali at this point—I think that he is probably still in Malenti and was never captured by the highwaymen. However, Kali was able to inform Rayne and Akyro of Hent’s plans, so they begin making their way to Asterel (the city of the star elves, also in the southern mountains). On the way, they meet Changeling once, but Rayne manages to scare him off by rattling off some of his darkest secrets. When they reach the base of the mountains, they rest in a cave for a while, trying to hide and gain the strength for the hike up to Asterel. One evening as Akyro is out gathering wood, Changeling shows up. Header here? Characters Rayne Changeling Category:Stories